As an experienced and responsible immigration firm, we have been contemplating the question of what we can do for our clients. An experienced immigration attorney should provide explanations, advice, and planning based on comprehensive research of the client’s background information and solid expertise in the immigration process. In serving the immigrants community, an attorney role can be described as FRASER.

Usually, the word Fraser refers to the Fraser River, which is the longest river in British Columbia, Canada, rising near Mount Robson in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for 870 mi (1,400 km) into the Pacific Ocean at the city of Vancouver (source: Wikipedia).

In this article, however, FRASER is an acronym for six words: Facts, Rules, Application, Suggestions, Execution, and Results. These six words identify the role an experienced attorney can play when serving an immigration client.

Facts

Research, or finding out facts, is the first thing an attorney should do when taking inquiries from a client.

As we have illustrated in the first part of this article, even when a client asks a simple question—like “While my green card application is pending, can I travel to my home country?”—a simple answer won’t help very much, and might even hurt. Every alien’s circumstances are different. A tiny difference in an alien’s background might lead to a completely different answer to the same question.

Moreover, many people tend to think about immigration issues in a simple way. They might apply someone else’s situation to their own. For example, one alien might have a friend who applied for green card, and traveled outside of the United States and came back. That alien might conclude that he or she could do the same thing; however, that’s not necessarily true. An experienced attorney has the responsibility to find out specific facts about a client and use these facts to make judgments.

Here is a case that demonstrates the importance of facts. Mr. Lee’s company attorney had filed a labor-certification-based EB-2 I-140 petition for him. Unfortunately, the Texas Service Center denied Mr. Lee’s EB-2 petition, because the company had not proved its ability to pay Mr. Lee’s salary since the company had not been profitable in two of the past three years.

Mr. Lee wanted to try again and retained our firm to do so. Attorney Zhang carefully reviewed the company’s tax returns for the past three years and found that the total assets for all three years minus the total liabilities were greater than the offered salary. Therefore, Attorney Zhang suggested that Mr. Lee use the employer’s net current assets to support the petition under the third ability-to-pay criterion.

Within a few weeks of submitting the new petition, Mr. Lee received his approval notice from USCIS. Attorney Zhang’s thorough attention to the facts saved the case. Here are the details of this case.

Rules

There are numerous immigration rules and regulations. Some rules are clearly formulated in immigration acts. Others, however, are based on special explanations from USCIS, like memos.

This is one reason why some immigration rules and procedures are very complicated. It might take multiple years of practice for an attorney to become familiar with all kinds of immigration rules and regulations. When a client’s case is relatively complicated, the attorney’s familiarity with the rules becomes very important.

Application

Application of immigration rules comes from an attorney’s expertise about the immigration laws and experience accumulated by practicing the law. Some immigration laws are well clarified. However, there are many subtle issues and grey areas in the way USCIS processes cases. For these issues, a simple “yes” or “no” answer won’t help the client. Dealing with these issues requires an attorney’s application of expertise and experience.

For example, take the question from our initial example: “While my green card application is pending, can I travel to my home country?” An appropriate answer to this question depends on the application of many sets of immigration rules.

Suggestions

A responsible attorney should provide sound and professional suggestions and consulting about the best course of action to meet a client’s objectives or serve a client’s best interests. Sometimes, a client comes to an attorney only for a specific case or petition. However, a responsible attorney should provide comprehensive suggestions based on a client’s overall situation. An immigration attorney can help clients shape their individual paths through the immigration process.

An immigration attorney should tell a client who asks this question not only whether it’s possible for the client to travel, but how the client should go about doing so. An attorney should tell the client, based on the client’s individual circumstances, what steps the client needs to take to ensure (1) that his or her green-card application will not be negatively affected and (2) that he or she will be able to reenter the United States when he or she returns. An immigration attorney should also lay out all potential consequences of the action based on the client’s specific situation.

For immigration cases, there are many different ways to pursue permanent residence in the United States. Each path to this goal has its own individual requirements, timeframes, and consequences. Choosing which path to pursue can be a daunting task.

An immigration attorney should evaluate a client’s situation and help that client choose which path is best for him or her. An attorney should tell a client not only what is possible, but what is advisable, based on the attorney’s more intimate knowledge of and experience with the immigration process.

For example, our firm provides suggestions for aliens who plan to apply for a national interest waiver (NIW) sometime in the future and want to gather the best possible qualifications for their applications. We inform potential clients of common evidence used to support NIW petitions, including advanced degrees, publications, citations, and service as a reviewer or committee chair.

We also give them more specific suggestions about how to shape their careers to support an NIW petition, such as suggesting that they obtain an advanced degree, publish as much as possible in journals and conferences, and build a strong academic network to make it easier to obtain letters of recommendation later on.

More details about career planning for an NIW are available here.

Execution

Execution represents the working process of an immigration petition. It is commonly understood that an attorney should bear a client’s interest in mind and prepare the application materials according to the highest standards of quality. However, the application process does not end when a case is submitted. Many more things can happen before a client’s case is approved.

In fact, the words “executive” and “execute” both come from the Latin word meaning to “follow through” or “carry out.” An immigration attorney should follow out a case and represent clients in difficult situations that arise during the immigration process. These difficult situations are incredibly diverse, ranging from a normal request for more evidence for an I-140 petition to administrative difficulties throughout the application process.

When an alien applies for a green card, chances are it will be that alien’s first time experiencing the immigration process. An immigration attorney, however, has been through the process many times and is therefore much more familiar with the problems that can arise.

Furthermore, an immigration attorney has easy access to resources that are simply not available to aliens who are going through the process on their own. This means that often, an immigration attorney is far more capable than an individual alien of responding to tricky situations.

For example, in one situation in May 2007, our customer relationship management (CRM) software helped Attorney Zhang form a connection with a USCIS officer who had asked for information about the client’s change of address. The officer was impressed by how quickly Attorney Zhang managed to find the relevant information and discovered that our firm uses the same CRM software as USCIS.

During this conversation, Attorney Zhang mentioned that it seemed like a good day to approve this client’s I-485 application, and in fact, the approval notice was issued the very next day.

This exchange occurred purely because of an administrative matter. However, in this case, having an experienced immigration attorney was a key factor in the approval of the client’s green-card application.

In another situation, one of our attorneys was instrumental in helping a client with his I-485 case—even though the client had only retained our firm for his I-140 case. The USCIS service center where the I-485 had been filed was not able to locate the physical documents for the I-485. USCIS contacted our firm because they saw that we had represented the client for the I-140 case and assumed that we were filing his I-485 application as well.

Even though our firm did not stand to profit from doing so, one of our clerks called the client right away and helped him handle the situation. The client expressed extreme thanks for how we helped him avert a potential disaster in his green-card application.

More details about both stories are available here.

Results

Immigration applications are definitely results-oriented. To a client, a case means their dream and hope for a better future, including legal status, job opportunities, career development, and happiness for the client and his or her family. One can never overstate the importance of results in an immigration case.

In our practice, we are results orientated. We do our best under the laws to advance our clients’ interests and objectives. Our high successful rate in NIW and EB-1 cases are good examples of our results oriented approach.

We are constantly touched to hear clients’ enthusiastic feedback when their cases are approved. To us, these results are the best reward for our diligent work. In our firm, we use the motto “always deliver the best” as a guideline in our daily operations. That applies to both the quality of our work and the results it produces.

Facts, Rules, Application, Suggestions, Execution, and Results are our work protocol and process. With each step, we deliver the best for your better future.